On 11/11, longtime poetry collaborators, Zoë Ryder White and Nicole Callihan read from their collaborative works and discussed their process. The two began collaborating in 1999 and have two published chapbooks–A Study in Spring, winner of the Baltic Writing Residency Prize (2015) and Elsewhere, winner of the Sixth Finch Chapbook Prize (2020)–as well as many other works in progress.
We were so happy to host Iain and Nathan on October 21 for a reading and conversation. Iain’s newest book, All the Possible Bodies, was published this fall.
We welcomed Taylor Byas & jason b. crawford to The Notebooks Collective in September. We were thrilled to have these two brilliant poets join us to talk about craft, friendship, using poetry as a means to reckon with oppression and more.
We welcomed Valerie Smith & Monica Lee Weatherly to The Notebooks Collective in August. We were thrilled to have these two poet-educators join us to talk about working in community, sharing cultural histories, and the importance of place.
A long-time friendship across continents. Both with roots in Washington, D.C. and with a deep attention to the world. Watch this In Conversation to learn about their new work and relationship with writing. And a very special crow.
Two poets interested in affairs of the heart and the abiding loneliness at the center of the human experience. Two poets who overlapped at Warren Wilson’s MFA program yet who have different styles of writing.
This conversation touches on maintaining a creative practice alongside life’s many competing demands (both in school and after it), what a first book changes and does not change, and the importance of literary/poetry friendships.
Massachusetts poets and friends Richard Hoffman and January Gill O’Neil joined The Notebooks Collective for an evening of craft, conversation, and literary citizenship.
A long-time friendship across continents. Both with roots in Washington, D.C. and with a deep attention to the world. Join us for an In Conversation to discuss their new work and relationship with writing.
Marcela says, “What excites me about speaking to Brandel about Locomotion Cathedral is her mindful examination of the role of the I (as eye, as conductor and mediator, as ego, as interlocutor) not only within a poem, but also in the world. This attention makes a great poem! but it also feels like a necessary step in understanding our place in the natural world.”
Brandel adds, “I love talking to her about poetry because she reads voraciously, and as a literature professor has the uncanny ability to read something of mine and recommend ten poets whose work could inform or enrich my own. Like me, she has lived in many countries, speaks several languages, and has translated poetry. Our work shares an international perspective, humor, a willingness to incorporate prose in our poetry (we both have published many lyric essays), and a fascination with fairy tales and nursery rhymes.”
Brandel France de Bravo’s third collection of poems, Locomotive Cathedral, was selected in the Backwaters Press contest, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press (March 2025). She is the author of two previous poetry books: Provenance, and the chapbook Mother, Loose. Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, 32 Poems, Barrow Street, the Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, Seneca Review, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. She is co-author of the parenting book, Trees Make the Best Mobiles, Simple Ways to Raise Your Child in a Complex World, and editor of the bilingual anthology, Mexican Poetry Today: 20/20 Voices.
Marcela Sulak is the author of five poetry collections, most recently, The Fault, the National Jewish Book Awards finalist, City of Sky Papers, and the lyric memoir Mouth Full of Seeds (2020). She’s co-edited the Rose-Metal Press title Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres. A translator from the Czech, French, and Hebrew, Sulak’s work has been recognized by PEN and the NEA fellowship. Sulak is managing editor of The Ilanot Review, and she directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.
Emotional openness. An invitation to think together. Fleda Brown and Anne-Marie Oomen aren’t just contemporaries; they’re friends and deep admirers of each other’s work.
Both acclaimed poets and essayists, Fleda and Anne-Marie are also both teachers, Michganders, and friends. They admire one another’s work because they see and listen deeply and make space for each other to explore the written word in various forms. There’s something magical about creatives who are so knowledgeable about each other’s work, and that’s the kind of conversation this was: intimate, warm, curious and generous. Enjoy.
Two poets interested in affairs of the heart and the abiding loneliness at the center of the human experience. Two poets who overlapped at Warren Wilson’s MFA program yet who have different styles of writing.
Expect them to talk about maintaining a creative practice alongside life’s many competing demands (both in school and after it), what a first book changes and does not change, and the importance of literary/poetry friendships.
California born but in possession of a New England disposition, Jennifer Funk is always trying to prove her sunniness is not a joke nor her attachment to doing things the hard way a performance. She is a graduate of Bennington College and of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers, and she has received support from the Bread Loaf’s Writers’ Conference as well as The Frost Place. Her work has been spotted in many of those “something something Review,” and her debut collection of poetry, Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy, was published by Bull City Press in June 2023. Jennifer works as a School Adjustment Counselor in Concord, MA, and she lives with her husband in what had been her grandparent’s house.
Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith, her debut collection, just out from Four Way Books. Her poems can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Poets.org, Ploughshares, The Slowdown podcast and elsewhere. She has won the Anne Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Review and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, as well as scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference and Storyknife. Megan lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College.
When two long-time friends talk poems, writing, and promotion, you know it’s going to be a treat. Sarah and Cynthia first met more than 20 years ago in London, where they were both active in the open mic scene. In this In Conversation event they talk about both creativity and process: the structures of their respective collections as book-length “projects,” how their own journeys with OCD/anxiety have impacted their work; form and the relationship of form to writing in other genres (specifically how their recent collections opened the door for prose), and the benefits of joining forces this past year on book tour and book promotions.
What a joyful event! Dzvinia & María Luisa read poems and talked about multilingualism, translation, and poetry as church. While their relationship started as one of mentor and student, they now call one another cherished friends with a shared passion for exploring how primary languages shape identity and existence.
Massachusetts poets and friends Richard Hoffman and January Gill O’Neil join The Notebooks Collective for an evening of craft, conversation, and literary citizenship.
Richard Hoffman has published five books of poetry, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; Noon until Night, winner of the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award, and his most recent, People Once Real. His other books include Half the House: a Memoir; the memoir Love & Fury; Interference and Other Stories; and Remembering the Alchemists & other essays. He is Emeritus Writer in Residence at Emerson College in Boston, and nonfiction editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices.
January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University and the author of Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. Glitter Road was a finalist for the 2024 New England Book Award. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, The Nation, Poetry, and Sierra magazine, among others. Her poem, “At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial,” was a co-winner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award from the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O’Neil was the 2019-2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She currently serves as the 2022-2025 board chair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). O’Neil earned her BA from Old Dominion University and her MFA from New York University. She lives in Beverly, MA.chigan Notable Books)—all focus on rural Michigan culture
On January 28, 2025, poets Carolyn Oliver and Hannah Larrabee read from their respective collections and discussed both creativity and craft. Throughout the event, the two poets shared a reverence for science and deep wonder for–and curiosity in–the world (both seen and unseen).
Emotional openness. An invitation to think together. Fleda Brown and Anne-Marie Oomen aren’t just contemporaries; they’re friends and deep admirers of each other’s work.
Fleda says that she can “trust Anne-Marie’s poems and prose to struggle admirably with the same issues I struggle with–how to say it, how it was, including the ambient sounds and textures. There is no posturing in her work.” And Anne-Marie says “Fleda’s poems invite me to think with her, to watch the spirals of thought we all experience–but she finds a way to reveal how they just might be insights to daily life.”
Both acclaimed poets and essayists, Fleda and Anne-Marie are also both teachers, Michganders, and friends. They admire one another’s work because they see and listen deeply and make space for each other to explore the written word in various forms. There’s something magical about creatives who are so knowledgeable about each other’s work, and that’s the kind of conversation this promises to be: intimate, warm, curious and generous. We hope you’ll join us.
Fleda Brown’s Doctor of the World (forthcoming this March) won the Finishing Line Press Chapbook Contest for 2024. Her eleventh full-length collection, The End of the Clockwork Universe will be out from Carnegie-Mellon University Press this fall. Previously, Flying Through a Hole in the Storm (2021) won the Hollis Summers Prize from Ohio University Press and was an Indie finalist. Earlier poems can be found in The Woods Are On Fire: New & Selected Poems, chosen by Ted Kooser for the University of Nebraska poetry series in 2017. Her work has appeared three times in The Best American Poetry and has won a Pushcart Prize, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Philip Levine Prize, and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her poems have been used as texts for several prizewinning musical compositions performed at Eastman School of Music, Yale University, and by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. She has won the New Letters and the Ohio State Univ/The Journal awards for creative nonfiction. Her third collection of memoir-essays, Mortality, with Friends was published by Wayne State University Press (2021) was an MIPA Winner and Midwest Book Award winner in memoir. She is professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she taught for 27 years and directed the Poets in the Schools program. She was poet laureate of Delaware from 2001-07. She now lives with her husband, Jerry Beasley, in Traverse City, Michigan, where she writes a monthly poetry column for the Record-Eagle newspaper. She is retired from the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program in Tacoma, Washington.
Anne-Marie Oomen received the Michigan Author Award for Lifetime Achievement, 2023-24. As Long as I Know You: The Mom Book won AWP’s Sue William Silverman Nonfiction Award (University of Georgia Press), Michigan Notable Book Award, and a silver IPPY award. The Long Fields, (Cornerstone Press), is her most recent essay collection. Love, Sex and 4-H, (Next Generation Indie Award for memoir); Pulling Down the Barn and House of Fields, (Michigan Notable Books)—all focus on rural Michigan culture. She wrote Uncoded Women (poetry) and co-wrote the award-winning The Lake Michigan Mermaid and Lake Huron Mermaid with poet, Linda Nemec Foster. She also edited Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Nonfiction (Michigan Notable Book). She has written seven plays, including award-winning Northern Belles (inspired by oral histories of women farmers), and Secrets of Luuce Talk Tavern, winner of the CTAM contest. She is founding editor of Dunes Review, former president and current board member of Michigan Writers, and serves as instructor at Interlochen College of Creative Arts. She appears at conferences throughout the country. She and her husband, David Early, have built their handmade home on wild acreage formerly stewarded by the tribes of the Three Fires Confederacy near Empire, Michigan, and beloved Lake Michigan. www.anne-marieoomen.com
